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Honduras Gets Bribe Telegrams

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The Honduran Government has obtained copies of three telegrams tracing a $1.25‐million bribe that it says was paid by the United Brands Company to Abraham Bennaton Ramos, former Honduran Economy Minister, through the Paris branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank to the Zurich office of the Swiss Credit Bank.

The texts of the messages, understood to have been transmitted in commercial code, were disclosed by a Honduran Government factfinding mission after a three‐week investigation of the bribes in the United States and Europe.

Jorge Arturo Reina, spokesman for the Government. commission, said that on Sept. 3, 1974, United Brands, formerly known as the United Fruit Company, sent the following telegram to Chase in Paris:

The funds were transferred the same day, Mr. Reina said, and came from the United Brands company in the Netherlands, United Fruit Continental, Rotterdam. The message, he said, read: Attention Mr. Joseph Schildklecht, value 4 September 1974, accredit under immediate notification Mr. Abraham Bennaton, order United Fruit. Continental Rotterdam, covers same value cable Chase New York.”

Chase told United Brands a day later it had completed the payment in a message reading: “Yours of 3 September 1974, favor Abraham Bennaton care Swiss Credit Bank, Zurich. Payment duly effected, value 4 September, 1974.”

Mr. Reina said in a telephone interview yesterday that prior to its departure for the United States on April 22, the investigating group carried Mr. Bennaton's authorization to examine his foreign bank accounts but that when the group arrived in Zurich it received a phone call from Honduras saying that. Mr, Bennaton had withdrawn his authorization on the‐ground that it had been obtained under duress.

It was for this reason that the commission was unable, it said, to prove that Mr. Bennaton had acted on behalf of former President Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, who was deposed because he refused to permit examination of his bank accounts.

Mr. Reina reported, however, that both the S.E.C. and United Brands had “agreed in pointing at former chief of state Lopez as the person to whom the bribery proposal was originally made.”

Mr. Reina's report asserted that in May, 1974. President Lopez at a meeting with two officials of United Brands, was offered “many hundreds of thousands of dollars” to help obtain a reduction in banana‐export taxes, then $1 a box. He identified the officials as Eli M. Black, former chairman, who committed suicide last February, and John A Taylor, senior vice president in charge of United's banana operations.

Mr. Reina further related that by July, when banana negotiations were “at a difficult point,” Mr. Black received a phone call in New York, “supposedly from Mr. Bennaton,” suggesting another meeting on the proposal to the President a few months earlier.

Neither the company nor any of its officials would comment on the Government report. Company insiders, however, have already related that Haney W. Johnson, a vice president of the banana division, met in Miami with Mr. Bennaton, where they said the minister demanded $5‐million.

The commission's report placed Mr. Johnson and Mr. Bennaton in the Fontainbleau Hotel in Miami Beach in mid‐August. The report also placed Mr. Bennaton and Mr. Taylor in Zurich on Sept. 3 and 4.

In a separate proceeding, the United States Attorney's office in New York was understood to have informed United Brands that a Federal grand jury might soon ask Mr. Taylor, Mr. Johnson and Edward Gelsthorpe, chief operating officer of the company, to testify.

A version of this archives appears in print on May 21, 1975, on Page 61 of the New York edition with the headline: Honduras Gets Bribe Telegrams. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe